03 wakes with a gasp, his body shooting upright, hands grabbing at his bandaged throat. The air comes in rushed and cold, every part of him shaking with a feverish intensity until the reality of the situation around him crashes down with a noise that consumes his every sense.

  He pinches his eyes shut as the roar of that sound rips through him until his mind is forced into a state of calm—until his body relaxes, and everything returns to its proper place.

  A body collides with his own, arms wrap around him, and he finally allows his eyes to open to see his friend hugging him tight.

  He knows it’s Chris, but he also knows that the boy before him likely goes by a number now. A cold fear prickles along the base of 03’s neck, that if he calls his friend “Chris”, the noise will return. There is a number on the bed he came from. It reads “08”… His friend is 08 now, not Chris.

  03 shivers, and forces that name out of his mind, instead bringing his own arms around his friend to return the hug.

  A name can change, but their friendship doesn’t care about names, and the noise doesn’t come even as he feels tears begin to fall down his face, so he figures this is acceptable.

  “You alright?” 08 asks, breaking the hug to search 03 eyes.

  03’s fingers danced around the part of his neck he had slit open, searching for a cut, a scar, a bandage, anything.

  “They gave us stims, it was a test…” his friend explains, looking around the rest of the room with tired eyes.

  03 takes that moment to better investigate his surroundings too. They are in a medical ward it seems, joined by four others on hospital beds only a few feet away.

  The apathetic girl who went by Chloe sits cross-legged near the edge of her bed numbered 01, eyes fixed on 03 and 08 with the expression of an unimpressed school teacher.

  Rage bubbles up in 03 as he sees a familiar hatchet wound smile and a pair of small dark eyes, eyes that smile at him from across the room. He is 04 now.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” 04 mocks, biting the tip of his tongue with his jagged front teeth.

  “Ignore him,” his friend urges, bringing a firm hand down on 03’s shoulder.

  “I suggest you all try and be friendly,” A low voice speaks, belonging to an unfamiliar man who enters the room. “You aren’t just survivors, you are the Vanguard now, best you all get along.” The new arrival is older, with a kind face and gray hair. He wears a lab coat, not unlike Doctor Yiva’s, but somehow he feels more senior in his role, maybe it is the way he carries himself, or the glimmer in his eyes. Trailing behind him is another body on a gurney, which is unceremoniously discarded onto the next bed.

  03’s heart skips a beat at the sight of her, the girl who was once Jessica, laying still on a bed labeled 02, chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.

  “Once the Harbinger grants you your gift, you will be given new names,” The older man explains softly as he examines the readout on a tablet in front of 02’s bed.

  “Harbinger?” 08 asks, his full attention set on the older man, fingers twitching ever so slightly.

  “Indeed my boy, indeed.” The older man’s voice drops faintly, one eye catching 08’s with the oddest expression, an expression 03 can’t quite place.

  “08,” a familiar voice, belonging to his friend once named Tony he realizes, the boy shaking sleep away with one hand. His new number is 06.

  At his tone, 08 backs off, the tension drops in his shoulders and his hands stop twitching.

  “Good dog,” 04 mocks with a cackle, catching another odd look from the older man in response.

  With a metallic thud, the doors to the medical wing open and Hayden, 07 now, is dropped into the next bed by Doctor Yiva, his small frame somehow not nearly as small any more.

  “What is the expected fragment percentage?” The older doctor asks Yiva.

  Doctor Yiva scowls, her eyes fixed to the tablet in front of her. She stays quiet for a time before answering, and when she does it feels like an afterthought. “22% currently.”

  The older man clicks his tongue.

  “Don’t act so surprised, MacArthur, we knew this would happen when the 0-6 told us to expedite,” Doctor Yiva reprimands, eyes set hard under those circular rims.

  “Correct, and I believe it goes without mentioning that 22% is still technically within the allowable limits.”

  “I'm sure the 0-6 will have a different opinion when they see what exactly 22% means.”

  “I’m sure the 0-6 will be thrilled with any result I provide them.” Doctor MacArthur claps.

  03 watches as one more boy is hauled in, Jerimiah, 05, looking even larger than when he last saw him.

  Now that 03’s mind is settled, he notices that everyone looks much more muscular than when he last saw them. Despite the fact that they were all dressed in plain white clothes, it’s obvious. Are his senses better? It feels as though he can see more detail, hear better, smell more, but even then the changes to his own body are hard to ignore.

  It doesn’t make sense… He had to have spent weeks on the metal table table, maybe even months listening to the noise, feeling the burn of the acid in his veins, answering their questions. He wasn’t fed once, unless it was through the tubes attached to him.

  All that time doing nothing and all, and yet the muscles in his arms are taut with power, his veins bulging in his skin. He closes his fist into a ball, and watches as his tendons and muscles ripple like metal cables under his skin.

  “I will prepare the Harbingers chamber. Once all of them have woken, let us move on to the next phase,” Doctor MacArthur says, waiting for Doctor Yiva to give a nod of understanding.

  As if on queue, the girl once known as Jessica, 02 now, stirs, and 03 can’t help himself but to rush to her bedside despite the shakiness in his legs.

  Her breathing comes in raspy, her body shakes, and 03 brings his arms around her, much the same way 08 did to him moments ago. He holds her there for a moment, as her senses come to, her eyes pinch shut, and her arms struggle to grab at him and return the hug—her breathing is panicked, tight, struggling.

  “In for ten seconds, remember?” 03 offers, adjusting his own breathing, waiting for hers to match until he feels the tension drop from her back and her mind return to her.

  06 offers the same treatment to the scared and shivering 07 as he comes to, though no one comes to 05’s side as he wakes.

  “What is happening?” 02 asks from under 03’s arms, voice muffled as she pulls herself into the crook of his neck.

  “I… I don’t know, but we will do it together, all of us, alright?”

  It’s a poor excuse for comfort, but it’s all he has to offer her.

  His thoughts are a churning ocean of dark water, crashing against some unknown cliffs in the black. Every emotion he feels towards these people is the same as when they had fought together, survived together, tried to escape together. He felt the euphoria of their escape along the desert roads and the soul crushing agony of their capture. He knew he called her Jessica, he knew her by that name, knew he was scared about whatever was meant to come for them next, knew he felt stronger for being near them regardless.

  But at the same time, he feels wrong for being scared, and feels incorrect for thinking of her as Jessica. Jessica isn’t the number given to her by site-51. If site-51 wants him to “move on” to the next steps he will, without hesitation. No fear is too great to prevent him from obeying, no amount of anxiety towards the unknown will stop his hands from slitting his own throat simply to satisfy their orders.

  Two parts of his mind, both him, but both strangers to one another. The dissonance is deafening, though as he feels his conscious mind struggle to hold the pieces together, fight to merge the two realities he holds to be true—the noise comes.

  It’s quiet at first, something small, in the background of his subconscious mind eager to guide his thoughts, but the more he thinks of the emotions battling for dominance, the louder it gets.

  His arms tighten around Jessica, and the noise grows louder and louder.

  Is this what 08 felt when he hugged him? Is this what Tony felt as he hugged Hayden?

  The thought of their names burns him, brings the noise to a cacophonous volume deep within his mind. He wants to keep their names there, keep Jessica in his arms, keep the feeling of Cris’s around him, but the noise threatens to burn it all away, threatens to drive him mad.

  It is all consuming, all encompassing, sucking him deeper and deeper into a pit of agony that promised never to release him again. He feels a whimper rise in his chest, escape his lips, some half sob that catches in his throat as tears well in his eyes.

  He doesn’t want to lose this, doesn’t want to lose them. He wants to hold on to the memory of what they are, what they were, what it all meant—but the longer he holds on the worse the noise becomes until it is impossible to bear for even a moment longer

  03 releases his hold around the girl once known as Jessica, and as he does the noise subsides.

  She cries too, he notices. Her hands linger on him until he breaks away, and stays staring at her from what feels like a million miles away.

  A person can only bear some much pain, there is always a limit.

  He can’t think of her as Jessica, he can’t hug her, or hold her. He can’t do anything that doesn’t benefit site 51. 03 notices now Doctor Yiva’s eyes moving between him and the tablet, mouth pressed into a thin line.

  He recalls what he was told while he was on that table.

  He was a tool, designed to be used. The strength in his arms, the power behind his grip, he isn’t just any tool, he was a soldier, a product of site-51, it is the only thing that makes sense.

  They were tested, made to survive. They were conditioned, molded, broken down into nothing and remade into perfectly obedient soldiers.

  A realization they had all come to, back in the prison, was that each and every one of them was of above average intelligence. It’s obvious that site-51 hand selected them for that reason. The ability to make tactical decisions, strategize, deduce, work together, it was essential for whatever needed to come next. They would be permitted to observe and come to conclusions, so long as they never acted against site-51 they would be fine. So long as they obeyed every order, they would be permitted to keep living.

  What he feels for Jessica, for 02, is just a little too much. Just a little beyond what is permitted in the eyes of site-51, and thus it brings on the noise, that is 03’s conclusion.

  If that is the case, then he will bring himself to the very edge of what is permitted, the precipice of what might be allowed, and take a single step beyond it.

  He will teeter on the edge, so that the noise is bearable. He will never betray site-51, he will kill for them, die for them, do anything just to receive their praise, of course he will. But he also wouldn’t betray his friends, and will never abandon the feelings he has towards those he cares about.

  “Good, you are all stable. Come with me,” Doctor Yiva’s voice cuts through his mind like a hot knife through butter, flooding every nerve with a drive to obey. His body snaps to attention, joining the others as they eagerly follow her path out of the door through the medical wing.

  Some distant, far away part of him is confused by it, wanting to pick apart the why, find the reason he has such a reaction to her voice, such a strong, primal need for her praise. It’s beyond normal mental conditioning, that's for certain. He knows what he has gone through, but being aware of a thing does very little to stop the physical effects of it, this he knows far too well.

  Still, he tries to understand it, coming to a shot in the dark conclusion that whatever substance was pumped into their veins—the acid—had something to do with it. Some chemical, some drug that rewrote the very foundation of their psyche more than likely, but thinking about it now does little. In fact, it barely satiates his curiosity.

  03 finds himself hoping that he won’t lose that part of him, the part that yearns for understanding, the part that fights for answers, but even as they are lead through impossibly long hallways filled with doctors and guards, rows of ceiling mounted turrets and sequences of blast doors, he struggles to find the drive to question the reason behind his current state.

  It feels as though he shouldn’t question it. This place is the way it is, and that’s that. To whose benefit is it to try and understand the reason? It doesn’t aid site-51 in any way to pick apart the details of the emotions he isn’t meant to be feeling after all.

  They ride an elevator down several floors, exit, and stop in front of the largest set of doors 03 has ever seen. If he has to guess, he would have said they belonged to an air hangar for an Airbus A380. Even more ceiling mounted turrets track their every move, one trained on each of them as they are joined by a half dozen guards wielding long guns and wearing heavy looking armor.

  The lights turn red with a mechanical THUNK, sirens wail, and the doors grind open, nearly deafening 03 and the others around him.

  They are led inside, joined by another half dozen guards, and the doors behind them close.

  03 looks to Chris—

  The noise rips through his ears like a shockwave, and 03 has to shake his head to clear his mind of it, leaving him gasping for air.

  “Are you alright?” Chris—no, 08, asks him.

  “I am fine,” 03 lies, and focuses on keeping his eyes straight ahead.

  He can feel 08’s nerves, as his hand twitches uncomfortably.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  His other friend, the one once known as Tony, moves ever so slightly closer to the one who was once Hayden, who shivers and struggles to hide the tears running down his cheeks. Even the boy once known as Jerimiah struggles to unclench his fists. Only 04 and 01 don’t seem to care, the girls face as apathetic as always, meanwhile 04’s is carved in that hatchet wound smile of his.

  A second set of impossibly large double doors open, as lights thud on in the room beyond.

  It is the largest interior space 03 has ever seen in his life. The place looks to be the top of a missile silo, with a domed ceiling extending so high up the tubes and pipes in its center disappear into nothing above. His bare feet slap into the metal grated floor underneath, the silo extending below them in similar fashion, so far down he can’t see the bottom, even as lights blink in sequence all the way down.

  In the center of the silo, is a white metal sphere the size of a house, half of it visible, the other half below them on the underside of the grated floor.

  03 looks up and behind him, spotting a glass viewing window set high into the curved walls, where a number of individuals dressed formally watch their entrance with teams of men and women in lab coats looking over screens behind them, like some sort of ground control for a space flight.

  The guards fan out around the teenagers, some staying near the elevator entrance, while others take up flanking positions near the door to the central sphere as it opens with a hiss.

  “Everything is ready,” Doctor MacArthur speaks, admiring the inside of the sphere as he exits to join the children and Doctor Yiva.

  “Doctor MacArthur, Nice of you to finally join us,” a voice calls from seemingly everywhere, likely from unseen speakers.

  “Of course, of course, happy to be here, Director Williams.” Doctor MacArthur smiles up at the glass viewing window behind the gathered children.

  “This is the first batch then?” the voice continues, its smooth, even tone bouncing off the stone and metal around them.

  “Correct.”

  “And when can we expect the next?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Excellent. Well then... the Harbinger is said to favor the first few. Let's hope our odds are good.”

  “I believe they will be excellent, even with all of the… changes.”

  “You mean to say even with all the shortcuts? Believe me Doctor MacArthur, were it an option I would have preferred we followed your papers more strictly and taken the appropriate changes. Alas that is simply not an option.”

  Doctor MacArthur smiles innocently up, which causes a collection of laughter from a multitude of voices to spill out over the speakers.

  “Doctor MacArthur—please by all means—if you do not believe a reasonable success rate we can postpone for an additional month.” A feminine voice speaks.

  “No no, now is acceptable, should we make the Harbinger wait any longer it may lower our chances,” Doctor MacArthur explains, nodding to Doctor Yiva who presses several buttons on her tablet.

  “Very well.” the male voice returns, muffled as the room hums to life. A whirring picks up over everything, drowning out the anxious breaths of the guards, doctors, and teens alike.

  With a sucking sound, black fluid rushes through the clear tubing extending down from the ceiling, disappearing into the central sphere, causing the entire mass to rattle and groan in protest. Steam vents from somewhere high, and soon the entire exterior is coated in a layer of frost that sparkles as it catches the fluorescent silo lighting.

  The guards shift uncomfortably, eyes moving between the sphere, the doors, the doctors, children, and the viewing window above, which becomes even more populated with well dressed onlookers.

  Once the groaning stops and the flow of black fluid ends, Doctor Yiva sucks in an unsteady breath, and looks to Chloe—

  The noise ripples through 03, and he remembers to think of her then as 01.

  “01, you are first.” Doctor Yiva steps to the side, and with her movement the guards part for her, opening up a clear path to the center of the massive sphere.

  01 walks forward across the grated ground until she stands directly in front of the sphere. Doctor Yiva taps on her tablet and a door opens at its center.

  The inside of the sphere is pitch black and filling quickly with smoke. The pressure 03 feels from inside is incredible. Cold, primal fear. Animalistic terror sending a cold sweat down his spine.

  01 steps foot inside the sphere, and the doors begin to close.

  03 watches, with wide eyes, as a single shifting shape adjusts its weight deep inside.

  “Doors are sealed.” Doctor Yiva confirms.

  The guards watch the sphere, the doctors watch the sphere, the other teens watch the sphere.

  The tubes vibrate violently, black liquid floods them, the air vents groan. The ground itself begins to shake, and the metal dome around them creaks and echoes in protest. The air seems to boil and bubble with something. The pressure in the room increases, a weight, a blanket, a cold crushing terror.

  After only a few seconds, the sphere vents smoke up through the tubes, and the door opens, revealing an empty space inside, as if 01 had never entered at all.

  “Success... next, 02.” Doctor Yiva calls.

  Jessica—or rather 02 now, walks to the dome, and 03 feels something inside him twist. Something is wrong, something about this didn’t feel right. It has to be right, because Doctor Yiva says this is what they need to do, but still, something deep within him reaches out, but is quickly suppressed as the noise fills his ears and acid courses through his blood.

  02 enters the dome, and in similar fashion the door closes.

  The room shakes, the tubes pump black liquid, and the air itself seems to protest the existence of whatever is beyond the barrier of the sphere.

  tap tap tap

  Smoke vents, the door opens, and 03 feels something wet drip down the side of his face.

  The smoke clears, revealing 02 on the ground.

  She is pale, her hair a tangled mess around her head, wreathing her still face. She looks peaceful, 03 thinks, as if she is asleep and can be woken at any moment.

  More streaks of wet tumble down his cheeks from his eyes. A response he thinks he shouldn’t have, even though it feels like the only thing that could possibly happen at this moment.

  “Ah... unfortunate.” Doctor MacArthur shakes his head.

  “Doctor MacArthur—” A voice calls from the speakers.

  “Worry not! Her results were…unfortunately middling to begin with, an outlier I assure you.

  “Understood.” The speakers respond, and 03 feels a wave of rage bare down on the back of his mind. Damn the noise that follows it, damn the pain that courses through his veins as everything in his body tells him to suppress it, to bury it deep, to crush the feeling down.

  The guards remove her body from the floor, carry her out of the sphere, and deposit her corpse unceremoniously onto the ground near the elevator, where two more haul her inside.

  “A pity.” 04 mutters under his breath.

  07 shifts imperceptibly closer to 06. 05’s fists clenched tighter, and 08 stifles something in his throat,

  “Should we reassess? her numbers weren’t that far below the others…” Doctor Yiva suggests in a low voice as she bites her lip.

  “No. we continue,” Doctor MacArthur confirms in a more hushed tone.

  “03...” Doctor Yiva pauses as she says his number, her eyes narrowing at the tears that continue to fall from his eyes.

  “Doctor Yiva... is there a problem?” Doctor MacArthur turns to look at 03, his own gaze much less accusatory.

  “He is crying. I am confident he has been successfully molded but now I am having doubts.”

  Doctor MacArthur smiles. “An expected reaction given how close they had become. Molding ensures obedience, it doesn’t strip them of who they are after all.”

  “I was worried that accelerating this process would leave more fragments than—” Yiva begins protests.

  “Fragments are fine, trust me. We wanted soldiers, not robots, yes? Lingering fragments means discernment, it means connection, it means bond. A bond that would be impossible to replicate under most other circumstances. What these children went through together is essential in forming those bonds.”

  “But Doctor MacArthur… 22%…”

  “Doctor Yiva,” the man snaps, but quickly regains his composure. “You are out of line my dear. Please, continue.” he gestures towards her with one wrinkled hand.

  “03, enter.” Doctor Yiva frowns.

  03 walks to the doorway, though he spares a passing glance at 02’s corpse as the elevator doors close behind him.

  There were no final words, no dying breath. One moment she was conscious and alive, and the next she was a fourteen year old girl sized obstacle that needed removing.

  He wants to cry for her. He wants to say he’s sorry. He wants to tell her she can stay with him... but it’s far too late for any of that now.

  A hole rips open in his chest, sucking everything in with it as the image of her lifeless body burns itself into his eyes.

  He should have fought the noise longer, hugged her for longer, thought of her as Jessica for longer.

  Stepping inside the sphere, 03 watches the last sliver of light vanish as the door closes.

  The space is dark, impossible to see inside even as the white smoke surely moves about the space. 03 can feel it, swirling around him, carving paths through his pores to settle in his bones, freezing him in place.

  Two sets of eyes blink into existence and rise far above 03’s head.

  His breathing picks up to an unsteady rate as the eyes watch him, examine him, like a cut of meat...

  Black globs of heavy, cold liquid drip from somewhere above and land on 03.

  How does he know it’s black? Everything in this sphere is black, but still, he knows.

  A white, featureless face emerges from the smoke. Black feathers of inky tar surround it, arcing down to a set of shoulders that spread out into impossibly wide wings. Its wings extend far further than the boundary of the sphere, the mask illuminated by nothing, illuminating everything, yet giving off no light that reaches 03.

  Terror petrifies 03, locking his feet in place. Everything within him screams at him to run, to get away, to survive whatever this was.

  This is death... this is the end of all things, this is absolute nothingness wearing the featureless face of a genderless being made up of an infinite mass of black feathers.

  More inky tar covers 03’s body. It flows from his shoulders to his legs, engulfing him, surrounding him, suffocating him.

  He can’t move, he can’t fight it, he can do nothing but accept the creeping crawling promise of death.

  Cold metal in his hands, pressed into the stomach of a man. He twists, tearing the fragment through another human being, another person. His guts spill onto the floor before he dies...

  The scene replays over and over in his mind, on a loop. He can’t breathe, he can’t see, but he can feel it. He kills the man, how many times? A hundred? A million? More?

  His mind races, he sees the city, and the prison, he sees people but no faces, he hears voices but they don’t speak words. He sees a young girl, a mother and a father, he sees the cut in her neck, the cold stillness under blankets, the star shaped hole in his eye.

  He feels everything... the pain of death, the pain of the deaths he’s seen. He is in someone else's head as they are shot in the back. He is a girl being kicked from an air vent to be trampled to death under the feet of others. He is a boy with the air pulled from his lungs in a press of bodies. He is a soldier being stabbed in the neck, a guard shot in the head, a scared teen with a barrel in his mouth, and a squirrelish girl missing an arm and a leg, crying on the ground.

  He is every death he has seen, every body he has witnessed. He is a man in a car in a home, with a star shaped hole in his eye. He is a young girl in bed, still, but alive, and saturated in gasoline until the fire comes. He is a woman on the ground, her eyes watching as her son touches the cut in her neck. He is Jessica, her heart giving in under the weight of the black, mind shattering under the flood, a broken girl left on the ground as the Harbinger judges her unworthy.

  03 sinks into the ink, spiraling further and further down, each death played out, each life lost, a hundred, more than a hundred, as he falls deeper and deeper.

  The mask watches him fall, watches him sink.

  He wants to continue to sink, to fall forever, to be forgotten in the black.

  Would anyone cry for him, he wondered... what would they do with his body?

  The mask watches him fall, watches him drown, and 03 welcomes it. He inhales deep, taking the inky tar into his lungs.

  Faster and faster he plummets, the mask getting further and further away. He remembers hearing that the worst part of drowning is the moments before you take in the water. The pain of drowning is the lack of something in your lungs. Taking in the ink, the pressure equalizes, and yet... it burns.

  Part of him wants to die. It’s a cold, empty, distant part. It fights its way to the surface for just long enough to take in the ink, but now that it’s inside of him, the other part wants to be rid of it.

  He fights against himself, the part of him that yearns to cough, to hack and spit and claw at the ichor until he is rid of it. He closes his eyes and plugs his nose as he sinks. He doesn’t want the face to look at him any more, he wants it to leave him alone, he wants to vanish and hide and disappear.

  03 screams, and with the scream, the ink escapes. He slams his mouth shut, desperate to keep it inside, to keep his lungs full, to keep sinking.

  His hands claw at his face, pulling at his mouth to force it open. He doesn’t want this, he doesn't want to open his mouth, and yet he does.

  03 screams again, and more ink expels, forced away, clearing his lungs. With each breath he rises and rises, the flow reversing.

  He cries, or he thinks he cries, as he claws and rips and tears and screams his way back to the surface. He pulls at anything he can reach, digs his nails into anything that will give. He screams over and over and over. He beats his wings and soars up through the black, back to the surface, back to the mask, the face, the face that judges him.

  Emerging, his legs grow weak... his body shakes. His wings extend out from his back at his shoulder blades. They rise and fall and shift in time with the monster before him, the harbinger of death.

  They drip ink onto the ground with a gentle tap, tap, tap.

  He stares at the white eyes behind the white face, he watches them for what feels like a lifetime.

  The Harbinger of death itself rises, its own wings tuck in. The ink drips from 03 and folds into his body as well. The ichor becomes one with him, pulling into his skin, his blood, his soul.

  He can see in the dark, he can hear through the sphere, hear everything. He can hear the words of the Doctors outside, he can hear the beating of their hearts, the pumping of their blood in their veins. He can see the details of the walls beyond the harbinger, count each weld. He can feel space shift around him, the ability to traverse it.

  He can feel the fear, the cold and terrible fear that screams at him to run as far away from this thing as possible. Any longer in its presence and he won’t survive, any longer and it might change its summation of him.

  03 wills himself to be gone, shifts the space around his body to get far far away, anywhere but here.

  The world goes dark, his wings fold in, feathers surround his body in an instant as he teleports away. His stomach twists, reality lurches, and he finds himself once again in another prison.

  Again, and I want to make this clear. Eren's (03's) POV is not about abstract character torture or torment even though at this stage it probably feels like that more than ever. I want to stress that Eren's chapters are harrowing, dark, and very much by design the inversion of Tim's POV, but that doesn't mean its dower forever. This is the Origin volume. it's important to see, well...the origins, even if those origins hurt.

  More answers will come tomorrow, I promise! But just in case I want to clarify a few little pieces because of the name-number changes.

  01: Chloe

  02: Jess (may she rest in peace, free from this hell)

  03: Eren

  04: Colin

  05: Jerimiah

  06: Tony

  07: Hayden

  08: Cris.

  Also to those of you who came from The Soldier, The Hero, the Harbinger ad, we finally have The Harbinger! (also the name of the chapter we meet Eren) It only took 42 chapters but I did say it was a (slow) steady burn, right? Lets see how Eren's situation evolves tomorrow!

  "It's enervating, empowering, it feels like life itself is surging through his entire body, filling him with power."

  -Chapter 5: And Then Their World Changed